Donald Trump: The Making of a World View

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'Insightful' Financial Times 'Instant and powerful illumination' Adam Tooze On November 8 2016, Donald Trump won the American presidential election, to the surprise of many across the globe. With Trump as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful country on earth, Americans and non-Americans alike were left wondering what this would mean for the world. It has been claimed that Trump's foreign policy views are impulsive, inconsistent and that they were improvised on the campaign trail. However, drawing on interviews from as far back as 1980, leading historians Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms show that this assumption is dangerously false. Revealing that Trump has had a consistent position on international trade and America's alliances since he first considered running for president in the late 1980s, his foreign policy views have deep roots in American history. For this President, almost every international problem that has confronted the United States can be explained by the mistakes of its leaders. Yet, after decades of dismissing America's leaders as fools and denouncing their diplomacy, Trump now has to prove that he can do better. This insightful and compelling book reveals the world view that Trump brings to the Oval Office, illuminating how that world view was formed, what might result if it is applied to foreign policy and the potential consequences for the rest of the world. An essential read.

Reviews

The most comprehensive account yet of Trumps thinking over the years. * Paul D. Miller, The American Interest *
Highly recommend this study of the development of Trumps foreign policy world view Instant and powerful illumination! * Adam Tooze, author of The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 19161931 *
Insightful historians Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms have done political scientists and foreign policy establishments a big favour. * Financial Times *
In this insightful study, Laderman and Simms expose the contours of Donald Trumps thinking on foreign policy and explore its roots in US history since 1945. This book refutes the widespread view that Trump can simply be dismissed as an improviser and a showman. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Trump presidency and what it means for the rest of us. * Sir Christopher Clark, author of Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 *
The unthinkable has happened: Donald Trump is now President of the United States. We can condemn, dismiss, and ridicule him. But it makes more sense to understand him. This short book uses his lifeworld and his own language to do so, and offers an insightful and compelling account of his world view, and especially his view of foreign affairs. For anybody who wants to know what makes Trump tick and how he is likely to behave this is an absolute must read. * Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential, Professor Emeritus of Government, Dartmouth College *
As the historians Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms show in this new book, since the 1980s Trump has developed a consistent world view. It is highly critical of the dominant US global strategy since 1945 of building and maintaining a liberal capitalist international order. * Alex Callinicos, Socialist Worker *
This book does a great service in identifying the genesis of President Trumps world view, based on his words, and considering its likely impact on the future of American foreign policy and the Western alliance. * John Bew, author of Realpolitik: A History *

Author Bio

Charlie Laderman is Senior Lecturer in International History at King's College London and a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Sharing the Burden: Armenia, Humanitarian Intervention (2019) and co-author of Hitlers American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germanys March to Global War (2021) with Brendan Simms. Brendan Simms is Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge. An expert on European geopolitics, past and present, he is a frequent contributor to print and broadsheet media, has advised governments and parliaments, and spoken at Westminster, in the European parliament and at think-tanks in the United Kingdom, the United States and in many Eurozone countries. He is the author of Donald Trump: The Making of a Worldview (2017), Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (2001) (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize), Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (2013) and Hitler: A Global Biography (2019).